Top 10 most common iPhone passcodes hackers find easy to crack

It is more or less sure that Apple may be launching its next version of iPhone - dubbed as iPhone 5 - in late September or October to capitalize on holiday demand. Photo: Reuters

A new research by developer of remote security app Big Brother Camera Security, Daniel Amitay, has revealed that 1234 is the most common iPhone passcode, mimicking the most common internet passwords.

The new study has given rise to speculation about the security risk associated with the usage of these common passcodes in the midst of the current reports of security breaches.

Because Big Brother's passcode setup screen and lock screen are nearly identical to those of the actual iPhone passcode lock, I figured that the collected information would closely correlate with actual iPhone passcodes, Daniel mentions in his blog post.

Out of the 204,508 passcodes recorded, the following were found to be the top 10 commonly used ones: 1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683, 0852, 2222, 1212, and 1998

In his research, Daniel found that most of the commonly used passcodes follow typical formulas. This can be in the form of four identical digits, moving in a line up/down the pad and repetition etc. Some codes, for instance, 5683 does not have any obvious pattern but these digits are apparently the numerical representation of Love, thereby mimicking a very common internet password: iloveyou.

This implies that such formulaic passwords are very easy to decode and thus, are never good ideas. It is very easy for a thief or a prankster to try 10 different passcodes on your Apple iPhone without initiating the data wipe. Besides this, it was also found that with about 15 percent success rate, one in every seven iPhones could easily be unlocked to reveal private user details like date of birth, relationship status, etc.

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